What Does It Mean To Exist?
by nancystagerat
Summary: R.O.D. the TV introspective from Junior's POV, set just after he finds out about his mother


"I don't know. I'm sorry."

That's become the story of my life. I've never known anything, or done anything. Nothing but my work, what I've been trained to do.

I can use a gun, take on five full-grown men with martial arts and win, phase myself through solid objects like a ghost, suspend my emotions long enough to do my job, sometimes to hurt people, like Mr. Joker tells me to. I'm employed as a secret agent and have the intelligence of someone three or four times my age, even though I'm really only six years old. My body's been aged specially so it's more like that of a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old. I'm being trained to house the memories and overwhelming knowledge of possibly the most brilliant man that ever lived, to become his vessel in the Age of Wisdom.

But that's it. All I'll ever be is a container. Whatever memories I can call my own, whatever short life I've had, all of it will be wiped out once the British Library's Special Operations Unit gets its hands on the last of Mr. Gentlemen's books. I'll _become_ Mr. Gentlemen, have his memories and knowledge absorbed into me and take me over. I am worth more than their very lives, but in the end I'm just a tool to be used for the British Library's gain. The boy I am now, Junior, will might as well have never existed at all.

Sometimes I ask myself why I'm alive. Is there more to it than just becoming Mr. Gentlemen's new host, or is that all I was ever meant for? I've never had a real friend before, or a mother. I've never been hugged, never had a real conversation, or been close to a person. If anyone ever tried to be near me like that I don't think I'd know what to do. The only things I've ever felt are disappointment and fear, inadequacy, or apathy. I don't even know who I am.

I'm getting to know Anita and her sisters, and Yomiko and Miss Sumiregawa better now, but most of the time it still feels strange being around them for so long. It makes me kind of nervous. Anita's not as hard to be around since I've known her a little longer than the others, but even still I never really know what to say or do with myself. A lot of the time I feel like I don't belong there, with them. Maybe it's because I've never done anything like this before. And even though I don't like it, sometimes I think that maybe it's because I was never meant to be close to anyone. Ever.

Then there's Miss Nancy. Yomiko says that she's my mother. She told me and the others that I'd been taken away from Miss Nancy when I was born, and that Mr. Joker had told her I'd died so he could train me to someday take on Mr. Gentlemen's personality. Apparently I was "special", a child born to two E-Jin, possessing the superior intelligence and skills needed to fulfill Mr. Gentlemen's need for a new host body. Yomiko said that six years ago, it hurt Miss Nancy more than she could express, being told that I, her child, had died.

It's kind of hard for me to believe that I ever had a mother at all, even if it was only for a very short time before they took me. It's even harder to get used to it now. Miss Nancy really is very nice, though, and at least I think she likes me. I think I like her, too. But…I'm scared that now that I've met her, being the way I am…she won't want me like she did when I was born, like Yomiko says she did then. And I'm scared that I won't be able to learn how to…to love her. I never know if I'm doing the right thing, or if I'm scaring her away.

I wonder what love must be like. Miss Wendy and Mr. Joker have always been so nice to me, but somehow I don't think that's love. Then again, I wouldn't really know anyway, but whenever either of them speaks to me, something I buried deep beneath the surface twists, and I know what they do for me can't be out of love. They keep me because I'm useful, because they need me for their plans to resurrect the world's most brilliant man. They're nice to me because I'm obedient. I've never really known how to be otherwise.

Is love supposed to make you nervous, the way I feel when I'm around Miss Nancy? Does it make you angry, like it seems to make Anita when she's with her sisters sometimes? Or maybe it's meant to make you feel guilty, like it made Yomiko feel when she told us about all the mistakes she's made in the past six years. If that's the way love is supposed to be, I'm not sure I really want to know what it is.

But then, Anita told me it's nice, having people love you. She said it's like always feeling safe, having someone to protect you and watch out for you and laugh and cry with you. I don't know what that's like. If the British Library ever gets the last Book, maybe I never will.

But even if I am, in the end, turned into Mr. Gentlemen, I hope that at least he'll have known what love's like. Then, maybe I can know it, too.


End file.
